While Viacom (NYSE: VIA) battles Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) over those MSOs' efforts to deliver Viacom programming via Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad device, NBC and ABC have launched their own iPad apps--although neither app focuses on live streaming TV.NBC Live offers second-screen social features and interactivity that syncs with shows being televised and ABC Video Bookstore packages archived news footage with photo galleries and interactive timelines. Both applications are now live on Apple's App Store, and are free to download (consumers can make use of ABC's in-app payments to buy individual video books).

Facebook authentication for pay TV is poised to take off and if you’re a network or a viewer you should actually be very happy about that. If you’re an MVPD, a lot less so.

What is Facebook authentication? It’s the answer to the long-standing question “what information would you be willing to trade for access to content?”

Not trade-trade, as in “give us your email address and a list of the last 10 things you’ve bought online and we’ll give you 3 episodes of Scandal in return.” But when you opt to use your Facebook ID as a way of authenticating that you actually are a pay TV subscriber, you’re likely giving Facebook access to your email, your friend list and all the Likes you’ve handed out over the years.

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

"The biggest advantage to Facebook log-in is that gives networks a way to drive tune-in, something they’ve been struggling with as of late, as viewers have moved to anytime, anywhere viewing, skipping through commercials on their DVRs and otherwise finding ways to avoid all those promo spots."

"...NBC Olympics has continued its efforts to streamline the authentication process with new abilities like In-home auto-verification for some cable/telco customers, cross-domain verification with Adobe Pass, and a longer verification window for users."

"...Hulu won’t be able to easily stop users of Google’s new Chromecast from using the “cast” feature to stream Hulu.com video from a Chrome browser tab to a TV. But that’s not a big deal — it’s effectively equivalent to connecting your computer to the TV via HDMI, which the website has never been able to prevent. Rather, expect Hulu to emphasize that it is enhancing its iOS and Android apps to take advantage of the native capabilities of the Chromecast device, for smoother playback and better remote-control capabilities and browsing."

"...Of course, anyone with any common sense, who doesn’t work in legal or biz dev at a large entertainment company, knows that it’s silly to argue that something that’s on one screen shouldn’t be on another. And anyone who wants to buy a cable and connect their laptop to their TV could already do this.

Which is exactly what Ossama Alami, a manager in Google’s developer relations group, told my colleague Liz Gannes when she asked him about the issue today.

There is one solution for content owners who don’t want people using Chromecast to fling stuff to their sets, Alami noted: Stop distributing their stuff on the Chrome browser. Not that he’s suggesting they should do that.

It’s worth noting that this move comes as Google is floating the notion of an “over the top” pay-TV solution, and talking to content owners and networks about licensing their stuff. And it comes after Google has already irked some content owners with earlier versions of Google TV, supposedly because Google didn’t work hard enough to keep pirated content off of those devices.

You’d think that if Google were serious about its latest TV push, it would take extra care not to ruffle the TV guys’ feathers. So maybe it doesn’t think this is a ruffle-worthy issue. Or maybe it just doesn’t care."

"This week the Wall Street Journal said Google (which owns YouTube) was seeking deals with television companies to set up its own internet-streaming service. Intel is expected to launch a similar service later this year. Netflix, Amazon and other online distributors will plough a combined $750m this year into making their own exclusive shows, to differentiate themselves from each other and from cable channels.The fight to preserve the old television system while exploiting the new is producing plot twists as complex as a daytime soap’s. The three broadcasters that own Hulu—Disney, 21st Century Fox and NBCUniversal—want to see the site, which had revenues of nearly $700m in 2012, become profitable. But too much success might upset traditional pay-TV firms, which are big customers for the three broadcasters."

Look for cable operators to increase collaboration to counteract over-the-top services like Netflix, John Malone says.

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

CNBC: "Malone said that as more alternatives become available and broadband connectivity grows, over-the-top systems, which bypass cable operators for control and distribution, may begin to offer sports content and challenge the established system. If sports networks decoupled from cable distribution and offered consumers standalone services at market prices,"you have an unsustainable model" for cable companies, he said. Despite long-term sports deals signed by cable networks, Malone said, in the next five years, bundling may begin to be relaxed because sports programming in every home becomes "not mandatory."

"Though consumers have been slow to warm to ‘TV Everywhere’ services, a new TDG white paper suggests that adding live linear access to the mix would drive widespread use of the service, enhance operator value, and even generate new incremental revenue. The white paper, Bringing Multiscreen Live Linear Programming to Operator ‘TV Everywhere’, discusses TDG’s new research in detail, and presents a convincing case as to why incumbent pay-TV operators should add live linear broadband distribution to their TVE offerings."

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21 (Reuters) - HBO could widen accessto its HBO GO online streaming service by teaming up withbroadband Internet providers for customers who do not subscribeto a cable TV service,...

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

...

HBO, owned by Time Warner Inc, relies on large financial support from its cable and satellite TV partners to help distribute and promote its shows.

Internet-only rivals such as Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc are trying to disrupt this approach by delivering original programming directly over the Internet.

This is a challenge to HBO, however it would be a risky step for the company to by-pass its traditional distribution partners, which provide HBO with lucrative subscription fees.

There are billions of dollars generated from HBO's existing distribution network and to simply circumvent that would not make business sense, Plepler said in January, according to the Wall Street Journal.

People are streaming online video more than ever before but only 17% of pay TV subscribers have watched cable programming online using so-called “TV Everywhere” services, according to a new study. The study, from research firm GfK Media, is the latest bad news for big media companies’ TV Everywhere initiative, which is aimed at reinforcing the value of traditional cable subscriptions. But since its launch four years ago, the effort has been plagued by delays in launch as a result of difficult rights negotiations between various entertainment companies and pay TV operators – cable, satellite and phone companies.

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

A key point from the article: "...One of the main issues that has been separating entertainment companies and pay TV providers is the question of which will deal directly with consumers, traditionally the province of providers. While providers like Comcast have made a big push to make content available online through their own website or apps – in Comcast’s case, Xfinity — channels like ESPN, Time Warner’s HBO and CNN have their own individual apps and websites with TV programming content. Those give consumers a direct relationship with channels they haven’t traditionally had."

More than five years after its introduction, U.S. pay TV's complex multiscreen initiative, TV Everywhere, remains a work in progress. Despite record streaming audiences for the World Cup on ESPN and Univision, the industry is struggling in areas like authentication, audience measurement, and consumer awareness.

“OATC’s effort to bridge the technology gap in this fragmented world of IP aligns our approach for single sign-on and more importantly normalized meta-data across content owners to truly leverage IP delivered opportunities,”

"The company said it is implementing the update, which envisions a blending of TV and the Web, because decreasing delivery costs coupled with the inexorable shift to IP and cloud-based video delivery systems are expected to alter the distribution model dramatically over the next five years.

Today, TV Everywhere is disjointed in that only part of a customer’s set-top-based video service experience is typically available on other screens in or out of the home. Some MSO-developed TV Everywhere apps offer a subset of the live TV lineup or just a portion of the pay TV provider’s VOD service, while others offer only access to an authenticated, multiscreen VOD library. Several programmers, meanwhile, have developed their own TV Everywhere apps that tend to vary in terms of capability and function..."

...Defining television as video content you watch in one specific environment or using one particular method (while online video content is some unknowable “other”) creates a line of demarcation that gets hazy when you consider a show like Arrested Development, which jumped between the two relatively intact. As author Warren Ellis recently wrote, “I think it’s worth admitting, now, that ‘television’ has become one of those legacy words, like ‘phone,’ that we use to point at a thing, without really fully describing it. It certainly doesn’t mean what it used to.”

“We don’t actually believe there is such a thing as digital video. It’s all just TV,” said Jon Heller, co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel, which works with companies to monetize content within the new media space. “No one buys kitchen television, in terms of advertising, the same way that they don’t buy living room television or bedroom television. It is all just TV.” The difference, he says, is that the audience now has more choices about when and where they watch, and the television industry needs to figure out how to deal with that diffusion.

"Last month Ad Age asked for reader input as we worked with our editorial partner Trendrr, the social-media monitoring firm, on updating our Social-TV Ecosystem chart -- a graphic representation of key companies in the sprawling social-TV space. Today, we're presenting the results of that collaboration."

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

Consumer metadata - much of it extracted from their social graph - is becoming a crucial element in content discovery. #BeyondTheEPG

"TV was supposed to be everywhere by now – watchable anytime, anywhere, on your smartphone or tablet. But four years into the industry’s effort, network executives readily admit: TV isn’t everywhere.

The promise of “TV Everywhere” has been a key strategy in the cable and satellite TV industry’s fight to retain customers in the face of challenges from online video providers such as Netflix.

With TV Everywhere, customers who pay for packages with hundreds of television channels are supposed to be able to watch them on mobile devices and computers as well for no extra charge. That perk is meant to make pay TV packages seem more worthwhile and keep customers from defecting.

Yet many rights deals still haven’t been worked out. More important, audience measurement firms have been slow to count viewing on mobile devices, so advertisers have been reluctant to pay as much for commercials on phones and tablets compared with television sets.

“We either don’t get any credit at all, or if we do get credit it’s at a fraction of what we would have gotten if they first watched it live on the TV,” Ron Lamprecht, NBCUniversal’s executive vice president for digital distribution, said during a panel at The Cable Show, an industry conference this week.

This gap in ad revenue has created a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario. Networks and pay TV providers aren’t able to offer as many shows online because they don’t want to spend too much for rights without knowing they can make their money back. So, viewers can’t reliably find their favorite shows online and don’t use the services much."

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

Having attended the panel discussion referenced in the article, here are my key takeaways (combined with some editorial insight ;-)

Universally accepted viewer measuremt across all platforms is essential to driving a level monetization comparable to the traditional/current "big screen" model. The content availability (and consumers) will follow. As Ron Lamprecht (NBC Universal) noted “We either don’t get any credit at all, or if we do get credit it’s at a fraction of what we would have gotten if they first watched it live on the TV”.

Usability for consumers is still problamatic, especially regarding the authentication process. While in-home "auto-authentication" by MVPDs able to leverage the identity of the cable modem helps, there are still significant obstacles for users who do not know or remember their credentials. Marcien Jenckes (Comcast) mentioned that Comcast was evaluating the possiblity of leveraging Facebook for TVE logins - an approach I have advocated for some time. (Synacor now offers Social Login for TVE to its customers.) A device registration process will be critical to enabling secure authentication - especially outside the home. Some of these issues are currently being discussed and/or addressed in the OATC (http://oatc.us/) Usability Working Group.

Public understanding & perception of TVE is also an issue. As Jeremy Legg (Turner) noted, it is a "project not a product".

Discoverabilityand availability of content was also raised as problamatic. The average consumer does not understand why they can watch content on some devices & places but not others, nor is there an intuitive way for them to discover where and on which platform the content they want to watch is available. That there are complex rights & contractual issues at play is not something that is easily understood or communicated to the viewer.

Video With a widely expected announcement to let some YouTube channels charge monthly subscriptions of 99 cents and up, Google is positioning its video site as the anti-cable TV: a video service willing to offer individual channels on the cheap rather...

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

Expected news, but interesting timing in concert with the introduction of the "Television Consumer Freedom Act" by Sen. McCain http://lat.ms/10Aoxy1

Service Providers Including Midcontinent Now Offer Synacor's First-Of-Its-Kind Social Login, Providing Access to Online pay-TV Content Through Social Accounts Like Facebook, Twitter or Google

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

TV Everywhere adoption has been hampered by usability issues and the "friction" created by multiple login processes. Here is a step in the right direction.

From the article: "Social Login gives Synacor customers the flexibility to offer subscribers access to online pay-TV content with their favorite social accounts like Facebook, Twitter or Google. The offering simultaneously authorizes with the subscriber's pay-TV provider or billing account. Synacor Cloud ID brings the convenience of Social Login to TV Everywhere consumers with the trust of entitlement verification for TV authorization."

Sherry Brennan: "We see that people who stream the most also watch the most TV. And the people who watch the least TV also are the people who stream the least. And so we saw this in video on demand 10 or 15 years ago and also in the premium TV market, like HBO: People who like video content and like to consume it, continue to like to consume more of it in more places. So those people are not going away from platform A to watch on platform B, although I do think there will be some shifting of where people watch time-shifted programming, away from DVRs and towards devices as TV Everywhere proliferates. But that's not really cannibalization, that's platform shifting."

‘It has to get better, and it will,' says the Synacor executive behind the HBO Go app, speaking at the Next TV Summit.

Peter Rosenberg's insight:

..."One major obstacle is that TV Everywhere is simply too difficult for most viewers, and that comes down to the roadblock of authentication. The pleasure of standard television, Bishara said, is that it's passive: turn it on and lean back. Needing to give credentials up front is counter to the idea of fun, simple entertainment. Auto-authentication will help, he said, as will options for signing on with a social network account"

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